"God Sends Help" - April: Lesson 3

Click below to hear the story

​     Hello again for the third and final Learning Together lesson for this month about Pentecost. The name of our story from The Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones is “God Sends Help” found on pages 326-333.
     Children: I would like you to begin this lesson by reading the story out loud or silently to yourself, or you could be like one of Jesus’ helpers and read it aloud to an adult family member or to a brother or sister or cousin.
     There are three important ideas I would like to point out in this last Pentecost lesson.
     The first is, as our book says, that there were lots of people from faraway countries in Jerusalem at that time, and many different languages were spoken. God knew this would be a huge problem when His helpers tried to spread His word anywhere, so once more He came to the rescue. He enabled anyone listening to God’s message to be able to hear it in their own language! It was another game-changer!
     Secondly, at the very end of our story, we learn that one man named Saul was watching the spread of God’s love and becoming more and more upset with the growing number of helpers who were teaching about Jesus and God to anybody they could find. This Saul didn’t believe in God and caused many problems for those who did believe. That is, until God arranged a meeting with Saul and convinced him differently with temporary blindness. After that experience, Saul changed his name to Paul, and he became one of the best helpers ever for spreading God’s wonderful news.
     Thirdly, because of the Bible, we know there were many well-known Jesus helpers as time went on, but the biggest reason that our religion spread is that average, everyday people shared it with their family and friends.
     We can all be a helper of Jesus!
     Adults: The Biblical references for the Pentecost are Acts 1-5 and John 15.
     In this final mention of how Christianity spread throughout the world, let us take a look at a few future numbers. According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, there were only an estimated 600 million Christians worldwide in 1910. This figure has increased enormously in more recent years, with an estimated 2.4 billion Christian followers recorded in 2012.
     The research center also predicts that Christianity will remain the world’s largest religion for the next four decades if these trends continue, with a projected 2.9 billion people practicing Christianity worldwide by 2050 and exceeding 3 billion thereafter.
     Christianity is expected to remain the largest religious group throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa, too, with more than 50% of each respective population practicing Christianity.
     The marked spread of Christianity across non-Western countries has significantly altered the distribution of Christians throughout the planet. During the 1900s, Christian faith was most prevalent throughout Europe and the Americas – claiming around 93% of the entire global Christian population. In 2010, however, only 26% of the global Christian population was located in Europe, with 24.4% in Latin America and the Caribbean and 12.3% in North America – a combined total of 62.7%. With the increase in the number of followers of Christianity in the past century has come a significant shift in their geographic distribution.
     Protestantism, in particular, has spread swiftly throughout the continents of Africa, Asia, and Oceania since the early 1900s. A lot of this growth occurred after World War II, during which Africa was decolonized and the strong restrictions against the practicing of Protestantism worldwide were abolished.
This Week’s Prayer: Jesus, bless all the people since the beginning   who have shared God’s message of love and peace with the world! Amen
     This is the last of the three April Learning Together lessons. This coming Sunday, April 28, please join our Sunday School gathering after church services at 11 am for a snack, story reading and discussion, and a fun craft.
Hope to see you soon,
Margo Greer